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Billy Taylor: 1921-2010 - Scholarly jazz ambassador considered D.C. home

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Billy Taylor, one of the most versatile, influential and revered figures of the jazz world, who left his mark as a pianist, composer, educator and broadcaster and made Washington's Kennedy Center one of the nation's premier concert venues for jazz, died Dec. 28 at a hospital in New York. He was 89 and had a heart attack.

Dr. Taylor, who grew up in the District and derived his early musical education from local teachers and from jazz shows at the Howard Theater, had a career that spanned nearly 70 years. He collaborated with almost every significant performer in jazz, from Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker to Wynton Marsalis, but he had an even rarer gift for explaining his music and drawing people to it.

Beginning in the 1950s, Dr. Taylor was a pioneering television and radio host and continued in that role for decades, bringing the joys and complexities of jazz to countless viewers and listeners. With a doctorate in education, he was a scholar as well as a performer and was considered perhaps the foremost jazz educator of his time. He taught in colleges, lectured widely, served on panels, traveled the world as a jazz ambassador and organized clinics and concert programs that took renowned musicians directly to the streets.

For more than 20 years, Dr. Taylor appeared as the Emmy Award-winning jazz correspondent of “CBS Sunday Morning," interviewing and performing with hundreds of artists. He was among the first to popularize the phrase “jazz is America's classical music."

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